The UK Anti-Money Laundering Legislation - Coursework Example

The UK, being home to the global financial hub of London, has necessarily had to enact a number of measures traceable to the 1993 Money Laundering Regulations. The paper is an analysis of the UK Anti-Money Laundering legislation in the light of the implementation of the EU Directives Money laundering is a criminal process of accruing supposedly legitimate assets or money, through diverse means and procedures, which are able to ‘clean’ illegal criminal proceeds. Fundamentally, due to its diverse impacts upon the economy, it has been vital for not only localized and regional attention but also global implementation of watchdog policy initiatives.

The dynamic nature of the criminal enterprise has necessarily dictated the need for constant updating of prevailing legislation in line with the new methods, processes and avenues of laundering ‘dirty money. As a result, the term ‘Money laundering’, has come to be categorized and connected to other diverse forms of financial crime in relation to the general misuse of existing financial systems. Accordingly, under this categorization, diverse forms of financial system misuse i.e. of traditional and digital currencies, credit cards and securities amongst others, have been interlinked to the criminal act1.

Furthermore, this has led to the association of terrorism funding, as well as diverse evasion measures of international sanctions with the criminal act of money laundering. Initially, pertinent legislation dealing with this form of criminal activity was mainly focused on local and regional settings, as various nations experienced the positive impacts of industrial growth. Accordingly, the diverse legislations enacted were principled along with these contexts, mainly dealing on a local and national scale.

However, due to the influence of the gradual globalization process, there was a need for a re-think of the prevailing preventative measures. Of fundamental importance, because of the link between different financial systems, there was thus a need to enact legislation on the supra-national level. This is principally the reason why current legislations conflate money laundering with diverse forms of illegal acts such as white-collar crimes, drugs and arms trade, underground criminal activities and terrorism.